Hidden Nature
by Shadowriter
Part Seven
"I'm fine. Would you stop fussing?"
"You're not fine. I find you passed out against the wall of the morgue, muttering about samples and phone records, with blood on your face and fingermarks on your neck, and you want me to believe you're fine?"
"She's fine." The EMT slipped his stethoscope around his neck.
"She was bleeding."
"A small nose bleed. Looks like someone put pressure on the nerves and blood vessels in her neck. Enough force can make a person black out. The pressure made her nose bleed a little, but it's not serious. A little rest, some Tylenol for the headache, and she'll be back to normal."
"I told you, I'm fine." Jill put a hand to her head. "Just tell whoever's using the jackhammer to knock it the hell off."
"Yep, she's okay." The EMT stood and picked up his box. "If the headache gets worse, or if you have double or blurred vision, you should go to the emergency room. But so far as I can see, you just need to rest and take it easy."
"See? Told you. Fine."
Lindsay threw up her hands and walked away, letting the EMT give some last minute instructions and leave. She wished Claire would show up already.
With Cindy. The reporter's phone had been off most of the morning and seeing her lover would ease Lindsay's fear for her safety.
"Linds?"
"Yeah?" She knelt next to her friend, who had been moved to the couch. "You need anything?"
"Yeah, I need to learn karate so this doesn't happen again."
The Inspector chuckled a little bit, relieved. If Jill was making jokes, she really was okay.
"But I also need to tell you --"
"Jill?" Claire's concerned voice at the door made them both turn. "Oh my God, are you okay?"
"She's fine." Lindsay stood and let the older woman take her place.
"What happened?"
"It sounds like she surprised someone in your office, and they used force to silence her." She gently reached down and turned Jill's head. "Pressure on the--"
"Blood vessels and nerves in the neck and throat, resulting in a sudden reduction of blood to the brain and loss of consciousness." Claire winced when she saw the still forming bruises. "You're gonna have one hell of a headache."
"No, I do have a hell of a headache. Would someone please turn down the lights?"
At her request, the lights in the office went out, leaving only the small one from Claire's desk, and what was filtering in from the morgue outside.
The three of them looked up to see Cindy at the door, her face white and her hand still on the light switch.
"Cindy, are you okay?" The inspector stepped forward to put a hand on her lover's arm, but Cindy pulled away, her gaze going to the floor. "What's wrong?"
"Yeah, Cindy, what's wrong? Tell us why your friend was stealing samples from Claire's office." Jill rubbed her hand over her temple. "I really want to hear a good answer."
Cindy said nothing.
"What are you talking about? What samples, what friend?"
Claire shifted her gaze from Jill to Lindsay, then the reporter. After a moment, she sighed and headed for the lab.
"Cindy, what's going on?" Lindsay kept her voice down, as if not to startle a frightened rabbit. Fear was clenching at her stomach.
The M.E. came back in and closed the door. "Well, that's it. She got them all."
Who got what?"
"I thought I could get another set, but it smells like bleach in there, and if she poured it on the bodies, there's no chance." Claire sighed and leaned against the wall, hand on her hip. "Damn. That means we've got nothing."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Lindsay's shout made Cindy wince and shy away from her, and she felt like smacking herself in the head. Lowering her voice, she looked back at Claire. "Please. What samples? What's going on?"
Without looking up, Cindy answered. "I need to tell you all something."
"Oh, goody, story time. Just do it in the dark and with a quiet voice." Jill had her eyes closed, her pounding head resting on the back of the couch.
The reporter looked at Claire. "Could I have a chair?" It would feel a little less like a firing squad if she was sitting, though the image of an electric chair had slipped through her mind.
Nodding, Claire pulled her chair out from behind her desk, letting Cindy slip into it. She retreated to the couch to sit next to Jill, while Lindsay took a seat on the edge of the desk.
With a deep breath, Cindy began. "It started when I first moved back after college . . ."
Lindsay Boxer put the heels of her hands over her eyes and pushed. She had already tried putting them over her ears, but that hadn't helped either. Neither movement could block out the words her young lover had said.
Finally, she slammed a hand down on the desk she was sitting on. "So, let me get this straight. You've known since yesterday that the killer we're searching for was a friend of a friend of yours, a member of this so called 'clan'. And you said nothing."
"Yes." Cindy's voice was soft, defeated. Her eyes never left the ground.
"Linds, she couldn't hav--"
Another slam from the desk silenced Claire. Jill winced as the noise strengthened her weakening headache.
"And when this 'friend' of yours asked you to get Claire out of the office so she could STEAL evidence, you didn't even question it, you just did it."
Cindy's head came up. "I did question." She wiped a hand across her eyes. "I questioned. I told her I didn't think it was necessary, I told her it wasn't a good idea, I begged her not to do this, not to make me do this."
"But she said to do it, so you did."
"You don't understand."
Boxer threw up her hands again, this time in frustration. She stood up and turned to face the reporter. "I don't understand? You're damn right! I don't understand how you can believe this bullshit, how you can expect us to believe it!"
"It's not --"
"And I don't understand how you can have information on a case and not say anything. What about our deal, Thomas?"
"You wouldn't have believed me."
"So that justifies you helping someone break the law, steal things from Claire's office, and nearly getting Jill killed?"
"I wasn't --"
"She wasn't supposed to be here. Drake was supposed to just get the samples and leave." Cindy's voice was dull, as lifeless as the bodies in the next room.
"And destroy any possible evidence while she's here. Do you know what Tom is going to say about this? My boss? Or Claire's boss? Or Denise? Do you have any idea what you've done?"
"Yeah." Cindy stood, wiping tears from her eyes. "I do know what I've done." She knew she'd sealed any chance of resurrecting her friendships, much less her relationship. "Are you going to arrest me?"
Boxer gaped at her. In her anger, arresting the reporter had been the last thing on her mind.
"As District Attorney, I can tell you that we have nothing to hold her on." Jill spoke with her eyes closed. "This wasn't an official statement, there was no recording, and any good lawyer would have her out the door in a heartbeat."
Lindsay seemed to still consider it for the moment, but then turned away, waving a hand in dismissal. "Get out of here."
The reporter picked up her purse and moved to the door. Looking back at her former lover one last time, she whispered, "Remember what I told you." Then she seemed to fold in on herself as she squeezed through the opening, her shadow quickly disappearing from the other side of the door.
A moment later, Inspector Boxer picked up a heavy paperweight from Claire's desk and hurled it at the door. It hit the frame with a satisfying thunk and fell to the ground in two pieces.
There was silence for a few moments, until Jill uncovered her eyes and looked up at Lindsay. "Now what?"
"How the hell should I know?" The Inspector dropped back onto the desk, curling her arms around herself. For the first time in a long time she felt completely helpless and totally lost.
"Well, all of our forensic evidence is gone. If we let that slip, the department will be a laughing stock." Claire sighed. "I suppose . . . I could take new ones... fake something."
"Fake it?" Lindsay looked at her in disbelief.
"Well, it's not like we're going to ever solve this crime anyway."
That even brought Jill's head up. "What? Are you saying you believe Cindy?"
Claire looked at her. "You're the one that went up against Drake. You tell me what you believe."
"I --" The ADA winced and lowered her head. "I plead a headache."
"My point exactly. Do you know how much pressure needs to be applied to do what she did? Most people have to put their whole bodies into it. In wrestling, they call it the sleeper hold because it puts pressure on the same points, with the same result, but it requires a heck of a lot more power than a simple hand on a neck."
"So, you're saying it's real?" Lindsay's voice was low, in tone and volume. "Cindy's not hallucinating?"
The M.E. leaned back with a sigh. "Well, if she is, then so am I. If I was looking for evidence of the ability to shape shift, or of a human animal crossbreed, I would expect exactly the same results we got from those forensic samples. Hair that's neither animal nor human, saliva that has indicators for both."
"But to say that someone can literally change themselves into an animal -- we're talking what, werewolves?"
"It is Halloween." Jill winced at her own comment. "Sorry. Still pleading headache."
"It doesn't sound like a classic werewolf. From what Cindy said, these clan members can change at will; they're not at the mercy of a full moon. And being bitten just means that you've been bitten by an animal. Doesn't mean you're going to become one."
Lindsay sighed and ran her hand through her hair. "So, what do I tell Tom? 'Yes, we have a psycho serial killer out there, and we can't really stop him because he's a shape-shifting werewolf of some kind, but don't worry because he can't infect other people and there are other shape-shifters searching for him.'"
Jill sat up slowly. "As much as I'd love to watch you tell your ex that entire sentence, just as you said it, I don't see why we have to tell him anything."
"What?"
She looked back and forth between her two friends. "Look, if he's heard about me being attacked, tell him it was somebody searching for drugs and they got in and out through the back window. Sounds like you think that's how this Drake got out in the first place."
"And the evidence?"
The lawyer waved it off. "You didn't hear me say this, but fake it. Pull the samples from anywhere, from anyone. There's a good chance this case will never go to trial, and we'll never have to worry about it." She rubbed her temple. "And if you tell Denise I said anything like that I'll deny it."
Lindsay sighed. She had her own headache coming on. "And that's it? We just -- ignore it?"
"You've got a better idea?"
With a snort the Inspector headed towards the door. She stopped when she heard Claire call her name.
"What did she mean?"
Lindsay turned back to her. "What?"
"Cindy. She said to remember what she told you. What did she mean?"
"I -- I don't know." She fled out the door, unable to face the memory of Cindy's whispered, "I love you."
Claire stared after her in concern. There was silence in the room for a few minutes.
Jill leaned into her friend. "Are we going to let them do this to each other?" Claire raised an eyebrow at her, and she smiled. "I didn't think so."
The two of them chuckled as Jill struggled to her feet. Her phone rang a moment later and she answered it with a sigh. "Bernhardt."
Claire slipped an arm around her still shaky friend, then stopped as Jill held up a hand.
"Thanks for getting back to me, what did you find?" She bit her lip, then smiled as she got the answer she was looking for. "Do you have an address for this Miller Turkette?"
Cindy stopped first at the paper to hand in what she knew of the second murder. She'd written her piece in her head during the long quiet drive back to the Chronicle. After drying her eyes, she'd gone inside, forcing herself to smile at her coworkers. Using every journalistic trick she knew, she wrote the story of Anthony Venner and his demise, then sent it off for editing. With a glance at the clock, she noticed that it was just going on four-thirty.
Her story finished, she shut down her computer and picked up her jacket. Catching a whiff of something familiar she held it to her nose and took a deep breath.
It was Lindsay's scent. Slightly leather, with a hint of the perfume the Inspector used. It made Cindy ache for her former lover, and realize just what she'd given up.
Her phone rang. She glanced at the display, which said 'Drake'. On the second ring, she turned the phone off and stuck it into her pocket.
There was only one person she wanted to hear from, and that person wasn't ever going to call her again.
She left the radio off as she drove, and let her mind wander.
She thought about moving. About how much it would hurt if she had to see Lindsay at crime scenes and be ignored. How demoralizing it would be when she was taken off the crime desk because her best sources were gone.
She thought about how soft Lindsay's hands could be. How her skin tingled when the older woman touched her.
She thought about heading back to Michigan and wondered if she could get into a Master's degree program. Her former professor had told her that she'd be welcome anytime. He'd make room for her. And it would be easier than knowing she was in the same city as Inspector Boxer.
In her mind, she saw Lindsay, lying peacefully in Cindy's bed, naked and yet looking so innocent in her sleep.
Michigan seemed like a good idea.
She opened the door to her apartment, then closed it. Reaching out to turn on the light, she felt the movement, and had time to turn slightly, feeling the air move as the claw raked down the door and sank into her shoulder.
Moments later, as she sank to the floor, she had time to picture Lindsay one last time in her mind. Then her head hit the door, her eyes closed, and she was falling into the darkness, wondering if this was Drake's revenge or just some twisted reality.
Then there was only black.
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